Countdown to Sponsorship

In Mick Foley’s latest book — his ninth! — he describes in great depth the six-week period leading up to one of the biggest wrestling matches in his career.

I know — you’re wondering what this has to do with ChildFund. But hold on. It’s actually what Mick asks his readers to do several times during the book, including the chapter “A Sponsor for Alimany,” that brings the message home.

Yep, Mick is a ChildFund sponsor and a major donor. And it’s an important part of his life. As he tells me during a phone conversation, “Writing about the match gives me an excuse to write other chapters that often don’t have anything to do with wrestling.”

Even more notable is that Mick agreed to divide the proceeds from the advance of the book equally between ChildFund and RAINN (another group he supports).

“I know how valuable the sponsorships are in ChildFund’s projects around the world. I just feel that if I talk about them in public, others will realize how easy it is to make a difference,” he says. “I can reach people who can completely understand that others around the world have it much worse than they do.”

His engaging style in Countdown to Lockdown draws you in and makes you want to read more. But what if you aren’t a wrestling fan? Mick’s got you covered. He developed a handy “wrestle-meter” to gauge the wrestling content of chapters that are not “Lockdown”-specific. In the chapter about his sponsored child, Mick’s wrestle-meter is set low and reads, “Skip it if you like, but we’ll no longer be friends.”

Mick with schoolchildren in Sierra Leone.

It’s in that chapter that Mick shares how he came to sponsor Alimany, a young boy in Sierra Leone. His visit to Alimany’s village marked the first sponsor visit in 16 years, since before the civil war started in 1992. Mick also has funded five schools in Sierra Leone to help with the rebuilding.

“It seemed very natural to write a chapter about my trip to Sierra Leone,” he says.

It was also in his travels to this African nation that he attended a “sealing the past, facing the future” meeting of women who were the victims of rape in Sierra Leone’s civil war. “It really opened my eyes to the oppression that women face in so many parts of the world. And it opened my eyes to how prevalent rape and sexual assault are right here in the U.S.,” he writes.

That led to his connection with RAINN (Rape Abuse and Incest National Network), which Tori Amos helped found.

Through his work with ChildFund, Mick says, he realized “it really might be better to give than to receive.”

Reflecting on the lives of his sponsored children, he writes, “I’ve come to think of those three or four Bombali villages all lying along that stretch of horrible road as my little corner of the world to nurture and care for. A small dot on life’s map where I can make a visible difference. Where a little compassion and a little more money can go such a long way.”

In his book Mick asks readers to contact ChildFund and specifically ask to sponsor a child from the Bombali area in Sierra Leone. “I know I wrote of this little dot on the map as my corner of the world to nurture and care for — but maybe some of you could nurture it with me.”